Video Deconstruction: Director Adria Petty on Beyoncé's "Countdown"

Beyoncé. The name carries weight. She’s not just a world-renowned artist, a famous wife, and soon-to-be MILF; she’s a brand. And her creative crew, Team Beyoncé, is made up of busy foot soldiers that go to war daily to maintain her carefully crafted image.

During a recent, expectedly busy week, director Adria Petty joined this frenzied infantry to serve as co-director on Beyoncé’s new music video for "Countdown," or as Petty describes it, a "very personal and sexy love song," from the singer’s new LP, 4. Ms. Knowles was also shooting other music videos that week so time was limited. But Petty (whose father is the musician Tom Petty) worked with Beyoncé once before on the "Sweet Dreams" video, so she knew the deal. This go-round though, something special popped off. Petty, no stranger to celebrity, saw the 30-year-old entering a "coming-of-age" moment. For the director, a classic film enthusiast, there was no better way to depict Knowles’s transitional moment than by paying homage to those that shaped her. So "Countdown" became a prissy pop culture menagerie: in just over four minutes, Beyoncé is Audrey Hepburn and Alex Owens, Diana Ross and Danyale Luna. We let Petty hash out the rest of the details during a chat that touched on Beyoncé’s pregnancy, the video’s iconography, and why it was not an act of plagiarism.

GQ: Working with Beyoncé, who is always evolving, must be a beautiful challenge.

Adria Petty: I think whenever you work with Beyoncé it’s a collaboration. She has a lot of input. And then you have the time constraints that come with working with her that push you into different directions

GQ: There are countless homages to pop culture of the past in this video.

Adria Petty: I think we were playing with Mod, and ’60’s and ’80’s iconic stuff that [Beyoncé] responded to and related to.

GQ: German modern dance inspirations also came into play.

Adria Petty: Well, I have some friends working with [artist collective] Yemenwed in downtown New York that did a multimedia art performance called "No Image" and I asked them what inspired it and they turned me on to this choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Her work blew my mind and I researched all her material out of curiosity at the time and I held on to some of the references because I knew Beyoncé would find it really inspiring if we ended up working together on this album. I always keep cool things I think she might like. Because she has such a keen mind for fresh and interesting stuff.

GQ: There have been reports that Keersmaeker’s choreography was included without her consent.

Adria Petty: In the end very little of Keersmaeker’s actual choreography inspired the finished result, but what did remain in there was going to be credited along with the amazingly talented Frank Gatson Jr. who does all of Beyoncé’s choreography. It was always meant to be a straight homage. I see there is a lot of fuss about it, but it is pretty silly. Of course, ultimately I’m disappointed that she wasn’t credited on the video because I know it was everyone’s intention from the get-go. But I’m assuming that’s because they were still finishing it the day that it launched and stuff, it was basically an oversight, you know? Usually, like with "Single Ladies," Bob Fosse got credited. But I know from an interview she did, that Keersmaeker is not mad about it. And the hope from my end was that this would put her work out there in front of a lot of people who wouldn’t have discovered it otherwise. So I think it is a beautiful thing that Beyoncé embraced something so creative and left of center and brought Keersmaeker some attention in a mainstream audience. She is obviously worthy of a lot of acclaim. She is a super talent. I am obviously a huge fan.

GQ: It’s helpful to know the backstory.

Adria Petty: From all I understand, she’s not upset about it. I go to blogs that said that she was happy with it. And what happens in something like this, which is what I was hoping for, because this really wasn’t intentional to steal somebody’s work—it was more to put it in the lexicon as an homage and to bring it to people’s attention than to—say "Hey, I came up with this." I think it was more the intention of all of us to say "Hey, this is cool. You should check it out." Hopefully that’s what will happen. And I think Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is aware of that.

GQ: The video fits a quote of yours. You’ve said you’re interested in the "craft of old cinema and the opportunity in the new digital world."

Adria Petty: My work tends to reference older films. I’m a huge fan of old films and I think it’s funny to me, Beyoncé’s got sort of a mini-Motown unit that moves with her, that does hair and makeup and wardrobe and choreography and even brings in the extras. A good deal of what gets put onscreen you sort of have to liaise through Beyoncé’s department. The week that we did our video there were a number of other videos being shot so there wasn’t a lot of prep time. So the things that evolve sort of come from that team. You show them some visual references and then you sort of see what they pull off the racks. And I think that it’s a lot more playful and spontaneous than maybe you would think, you know what I mean? It’s definitely coming from those references and those worlds, but it’s really coming from the eye of Beyoncé and what comes from her instincts, her gut. And that’s the fun part of working with her. She likes to have these opportunities to play and have options. And when you work with her, she really gives you a lot of input and gives you her gut.

GQ: It sounds like things weren’t necessarily planned out ahead of time.

Adria Petty: I mean, that’s not 100 percent true. There’s definitely some things that are planned out. I would just say that, you know, overall for like the million wardrobe changes you see in the video, I think a lot of that is spontaneous thinking and sort of creative play. And I think that that’s kind of what’s great about the video. I think she’s just having a great time.

GQ: Her baby bump was exposed in some shots. Was this done purposefully? She seems quite proud to be pregnant.

Adria Petty: I think you’d have to ask her that. I think she’s sharing what she wants to share with people.

GQ: Were her energy levels affected by the pregnancy?

Adria Petty: I think it affected her energy, for sure. It would affect anyone’s energy but she’s certainly a force of nature. She’s very focused and very driven and kind of not derailed by anything. She’s a human being—she’s been working extraordinarily hard, and pregnant, and is a quite impressive human being in that respect. You know, a lot of people would not be able to do what she’s been doing while she’s been pregnant.

Adria Petty: I really wanted to do something iconic and wholesome because the song is really—it’s a really cute, very personal and sexy love song with a very bizarre time signature. So when you’re trying to break down the song and really look at it—from the best of my abilities—through her eyes and what she wanted to accomplish with it, I think she wanted to make a strong impression and be really full of joy and sort of unexpected. This was even before I knew she was pregnant. I saw that her album is really wholesome. It has the feeling of sort of Janet Jackson Control or something. It seems that this is a really important moment in her life—her coming-of-age moment in her life: where she’s managing her self, and having a kid, and she’s turning 30. There’s something about that part of Funny Face where Audrey Hepburn’s sort of rebelling from becoming a model and doing that dance. It just has the right spirit. We showed it to Beyoncé and she really loved it. I think she loved the energy of it and the syncopation of it and how it could play with the song and just how sort of iconic it is. And how she could reinterpret that iconic image. And it’s very wholesome and it’s really beautiful, but it’s still really sexy.

Adria Petty: I really wasn’t involved with this edit at all. I would love to say I did but I really wasn’t in the end involved with it. Because it’s just sort of a runaway train. I think they changed gears in terms of the release date and I was not available for it. I think they actually emulate a lot of my style in the edit from my other videos.

GQ: Beyoncé was a co-director for the video. Is there a future for Queen B behind the lens?

Adria Petty: Beyoncé really put a lot of her own energy into it as director and really really added a lot and made a lot of decision-making on the finished product. And I think that she did a really great job. She put obviously a lot of thought and a lot of energy into it. That’s a very new development for her. She always cares and she’s always very involved and opinionated about stuff in a really cool way, in a way that actually makes you want to go to work for her ’cause she’s so smart. I think that this particular record I think she’s really finding her voice, and I think it’s a bit rocky at times, but she really is finding a voice as a creative that’s exciting. And I think people will see her doing amazing things when she starts to learn that medium. She’ll pick it up really fast.

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